Because some "people" deserve to be killed. Gun control advocates for instance, the politicians who cater to them by legislating and enacting gun control and gun bans, and the "law enforcement" agents at the federal, state and local levels who enforce such "laws" (and who wear body armor as a matter of routine during their violent no-knock raids).
Wow. You realize that you just advocated the assassination of public officials, right? (Not to mention myself - a gun control advocate). If I thought you were serious I would report you to the same authorities you appear to hate so vehemently, but as I actually believe you are a harmless internet troll fapping away while people respond to your hate rants with outrage, I will pass.
BTW, have fun with the FBI/Secret Service investigation you are so desperate to instigate. I know they'll have fun with you...
No. Its to filter out people who should not have guns in the first place.
And since it cannot possibly help in that regard - fail.
Why exactly? Thats the reason so many people are so upset about the failure to do anything. You have no reasons. I offered a number of reasons why I think more effective background checks are a good idea but you dont address any of them. You simply parrot the NRA line that it just "wont work". No reasons, just that background checks will somehow inconvenience people - which is bullshit for two reasons:
1. People already do such things for dozens of other less dangerous licences - car, boat, insurance, even a fucking hunting license takes time and a little money
2. A large majority of gun owners ARE IN FAVOR OF THESE REGULATIONS!!!!!
Then of course you pull out the old chestnut: some hypothetical future (democratically elected) official will suddenly become a fascist dictator hell bent on taking everyone's guns away for some reason. (Of course you could be one of the crazies that think Obama is the antichrist or something, in which case you should probably just stop reading and go polish your gun). There are again, two primary problems with this objection:
1. An AR-15 will not stop an M1-A1 tank. Not with depleted uranium bullets and a million round magazine. Never, ever, never. So get that out of your head. And if you think the "resistance" will be able to pull a General Washington on them and hide in the woods doing hit-and-runs, I have news for you - "they" are us. We are them. We/us/they are not going anywhere, no matter how many IUDs you place in the K-Mart parking lot. So how would a Vietcong "make it bloody and wait em out" strategy work exactly?
2. And even if the anti-christ did make an appearance, what makes you think your silly second amendment will protect you from the forces of darkness. The only reason we're even having this "discussion" is because there is respect for the rule of law - especially the constitution. If Darth Clinton came at you with a UN helmet and a laser, do you really think the black helicopters will give a flying fuck what it says about a well regulated militia?!? Really?
Please understand, I am in no way suggesting that the government should confiscate anyone's shotgun or even their licensed handgun. What I and most of the rest of the country is saying is, "let's be smart about who we let have a gun". Very simple. What exactly - and I mean lay it out for me in more detail than "nah, wont work" - is wrong with that?
Please, for the sake of everyone else who agrees with you and has similarly failed to do so, give us something that doesn't include "because freedom".
[Sorry for the dupe post, but I didnt want to post anonymously]
It's for the government to track who has legal guns among people that will not commit crimes.
No. Its to filter out people who should not have guns in the first place. The conspiracy theory on this is that there will be some maniacal evil genius control freak somewhere (at the UN?) ready to command a secret army massing behind the moon to go door to door in Montana taking away everyone's shotguns. Utter gibberish. And of course there's the inevitable Nazi references, which I wont even waste the pixels addressing.
Well then it's stupid on the face of it because "ON AVERAGE" all criminals simply buy or steal guns illegally anyway, since they don't want something that could be traced back to them. They are criminals after all.
Exactly! And where do these guns come from exactly? They are not coming from some random gun theft in some random neighborhood. They are coming from organized groups of criminals who are operating in the dark corners of the gun show loopholes buying weapons and ammo in volume to resell on the black market. Again, background checks will not stop all gun violence. They will simply thwart the largest illicit operations from doing what they have done for decades: buy lots of guns in places where no one cares who they are or who they are associated with and re-sell them illegally in places where it's hard to get a gun. This is how ALL black markets work.
In the end all you are doing is tracking the people who will ON AVERAGE never commit a crime, and make it harder for them to buy guns than the criminals that may kill them.
Why do I need to register my car? On average, most people do not engage in vehicular manslaughter. But when it does occur law enforcement has a way to track the car to a person. Now that person may not have been driving because the car was stolen, but at least they can ask that person what happened to the car. Did their brother-in-law borrow it? When/where was it reported stolen? Etc. Similarly, why do I need a passport to get across a border. On average most people are not trying to escape justice and remain anonymous. But by requiring everyone to have one, we are much more effective in maintaining security at the borders and track criminals as they travel. (You sound like a border-security type, so that should sound familiar).
I can't believe that someone on Slashdot is taking the side of the jackboots
There's Godwin's law [wikipedia.org] at work. You didn't actually call the US government Nazis, but you do realize where the term "jackboot" comes from...right?
If you are at all about protecting rights you are against further gun regulations;
Why? Because you have the only "correct" opinion? Sounds like a fascism to me. I am using well established non-partisan facts to make a case for sane gun regulations designed to allow law abiding people to continue buying guns for both recreational and self-defense purposes while filtering as many illicit purchases as possible.
You, on the other hand, are relying on misinformation disseminated by the lobbying organization for the largest weapons manufacturers in the world to make outrageous speculative claims about some mythological totalitarian state that exists only in the minds of people who go to great lengths to justify wearing a pistol into McDonalds.
Registration when buying kitchen supplies? If gun regulation passes I will be in full support of it, because why go halfway?
Cant believe I have to address this, but I will. Kitchen supplies have a non-lethal, non-criminal, delicious purpose. You can use a rock to kill someone. That is what's known in the debating business as a "strawman". Look it up. I dont have the patience to put two wikipedia links into one post. No one - NO ONE - is suggesting that we regulate anything that can be
You miss the point of background checks. It is not to stop individual crimes. It is to make it harder - ON AVERAGE - for people with a history of violent and/or criminal behavior to acquire firearms. Think abusive spouses who don't like their ex's being with someone new. Or a stalker who wants to take their obsession to the next level. Or a thug with a record who wants to pick up the latest in thug technology. WIthout a federal background check, states that allow people to carry concealed weapons into bars and schools in the name of "freedom" would do nothing to stop such individuals from acquiring firearms.
The 20 children killed in the Newtown massacre (say that out loud if you are unsure of why people want action) are a drop in the bucket when it comes to gun violence. THOUSANDS have been killed by guns since then, and many of those crimes would almost certainly not have occurred if the US had two things: 1) effective and universal gun regulations, 2) a less fanatical obsession with violence as a solution to people's problems (think "War on ___" or how every "action" movie poster includes someone holding a weapon). I am not one to shy away from criticizing the entertainment industry for their pandering, and hope the increasing number of large-scale public tragedies involving guns will begin to turn the tide against this long-standing trend.
But i digress.
The ridiculous meme that says something like: "Chicago has strict gun laws and they have lots of gun violence" completely ignores the fact that many if not all of the guns used in Chicago come from outside the city's jurisdiction. The same goes for NY, Washington DC, Miami, etc. These cities know what the problem is, but they cant do anything about it because neighboring states ignore it in the name of "freedom". Recent studies have shown that a large percentage of the guns used in NY-Metro area crimes originate as legit purchases in states like Virginia where the gun lobby has fear-mongered the local legislature away from even the most basic regulations.
Consider what would happen if you couldn't go to a "gun show" in someone's backyard and pick up a bunch of handguns to sell on the black market in Chicago. Where would the average street thug get their weapons? Russian arms dealers? 3D printing? Granted there are plenty of weapons already out there, but is "it's hard so what's the point" really an excuse?
And background checks do not address the problem of what you can buy once you pass. Why would anyone need a semi-automatic rifle with armor piercing rounds and a 30-round magazine?!? For that entire heard of delicious armor-plated deer you ran out of standard rounds trying to slaughter? To shoot at UN tanks when they invade Idaho?
Yes, he had time to shoot those kids multiple times. That's a big fat, "Whatever". They were likely dead after the first well aimed shot.
To begin with, your callus attitude towards what happened in that classroom is astounding. It is indicative of why this "debate" is so futile. You appear to feel nothing for those kids and what they went through - whether they were killed after the "first well aimed shot" or not.
That said, let me try to get past your perhaps unwitting ugliness and address the points you tried to make.
First you dismiss any effective difference between, for example, a bolt-action hunting rifle and a semi-automatic assault weapon. Fine, so why would anyone need a Bushmaster? If you can shoot a deer or an intruder with a bolt action or shotgun and get the job done just as effectively, why do we need semi-automatic weapons at all? Convenience? Not good enough. Cool-factor? Not even close. So I would suggest that you explain to the world why exactly we need such weapons in the hands of civilians in the first place.
Second, you claim that because there are 200 million weapons out there already, "The crazy people will get them and there is nothing you and I or even Congress can do about it. Period." Really? So if no new semi-automatic weapons were manufactured or imported for civilian use, would there still be 200 million weapons out there in 10 years? 20 years? Would you tell a newborn that there's nothing you or anyone else can do about guns because it wouldn't help anyone right now? Sounds like a rather short-sighted view of the world. Perhaps you would reconsider if you added confiscation regulations as well - but no, of course not. That would be "treasonous" and cause for another "revolution". And at the very least, it would not get past the House with its current makeup. Another reason to vote Democratic in 2014.
The rest of your reasoning is somewhat less coherent, but I will address a little of it.
If someone can afford to spend their money on drugs, they can certainly afford to buy a gun on the black market.
This is a bit of a digression, but I believe you misunderstand why people buy guns on the black market. No one who can "afford to buy drugs" would buy a gun to get more because they already have the money to buy drugs. Based on how you talk about drugs I do believe you when you say that you've never smoked pot in your life. Moreover, the fact that you place the words pot and guns in the same sentence implies that you have a very shallow understanding of what makes someone commit a gun crime. Pot is almost never the source of individual crimes on it's own. Mainly for the reason you yourself suggest - it's too easy to get (Cartel violence is of course another story, but the legalization and regulation of marijuana is a completely different discussion that is also being had across the nation). Heroin, meth, cocaine, etc is where the gun violence is at, and most of those crimes are committed using guns that were purchased legally and then fell into the black market. But back to your case.
I've never owned a gun in my life, and I am certain I could, with a reasonable amount of money, get my hands on 2-3 handguns, unregistered and ready for some school rampage.
And why is that exactly? Because criminals are so good at working the system? No. You can buy an unregistered firearm precisely because so many unregistered weapons are being sold legally. What do you think they're doing at all those school gymnasium "gun shows"? No background checks. No registration. And if you're referring to the weak serial number system currently in place, how about some microprinting on them guns? No of course not, because that would make George Washington cry.
the culture needs to change, and then the people will hand in their guns on their own unless they actually need them
not a single one of the new regulations being proposed would have stopped any of these mass shootings
So what you're saying is that Lanza would have done the same amount of damage as fast as he did without the use of a semi-automatic assault rifle? You're suggesting that the sale of thousands of rounds of ammunition to anonymous buyers without any oversight would not have made it more difficult to acquire the arsenals used in many of these shootings? Are you saying that there is no such thing as an effective gun regulation?
The US has almost double the rate of any other industrialized nation when it comes to gun related crime. The reasons for that are fairly simple: a) it's too easy to buy a gun, b) the cultural insanity that calls itself the "gun culture" has put weaponized assault on the forefront of everyone's mind.
Moreover, the "gunshow loophole" has created a huge hole in whatever gun regulations there are already in place, which makes it seem easy to argue that "gun laws are ineffective". The common way to put this is: "gun crime is the most serious where the gun laws are the strictest, so that means gun laws dont work". Bullshit. Gun laws do work, its the fact that guns are purchased in unregulated states and brought to where the money is: NYC, Chicago, LA, etc. (Fact: most guns used in NYC crimes are purchased legally in places like Virginia and resold on the black market - look it up).
Therefore it stands to reason that if gun laws both strict and uniform across all the states (i.e., federal law), it would be much more difficult for criminals to attain weapons. Now of course this will not be effective overnight. There are already millions and millions of guns out in the wild, but going forward we need to start working on a sane gun policy and apply it everywhere - not just where people are actually dying from gun violence.
People outside major cities are perfectly happy to reap the rewards they bring to our society, but when it comes to gun violence, the non-city dwellers say "Screw you, we're keeping our guns. You're on your own".
While it is true that the share price is partly based on the assumption that the price will continue to go up - i.e., getting in now is the best way to make money on Apple's future success. - there is good reason for optimism. The Tulip example is of course a metaphor, but Apple is not a commodity or even a set of products. Apple is a way of designing, making and marketing products. The reason Samsung is able to sell smart phones at the rate they are is because Apple made everyone "realize" that smart phones are cool. And that's just design and marketing. They also make stuff. Really well.
BTW, I dont (think) I even own any Apple stock.
Let me start by saying that I believe you are as upset about what happened as anyone else. I also believe that you are trying to be reasonable about this. However...
More guns == more violence. Plain and simple. If you arm more people, more people will be involved in gun violence. This is not a conclusion, but rather a fundamental premise for any argument that involves "if only someone had been armed, they could have stopped this". In other words, the only way for me to be safe from guns is to carry a gun myself. Hence the reductio ad absurdum critique.
If you asked people to decide between no one having a gun and everyone having one, I think most non-gun owners would instantly say: no guns. Gun owners on the other hand would provide a wide array of excuses for their fetish. (His mother was an avowed "gun enthusiast", by the way)
Some will point to boogie men like FEMA or the UN. Others would offer what appears on the face of it to be a reasonable answer, saying that guns were a fact of life for pre-modern societies who lacked sophisticated law enforcement or local fried chicken joints, and therefore it would somehow be unfair if they cant go out and shoot some deer on the weekends because its "part of our history".
All of these reasons are ridiculous. An AR-15 you buy at Walmart is not going to stop a fantasy FEMA tank and no one uses a Glock 9mm to hunt. So ultimately they all fall back on "its in the constitution", as if it was something Jesus said. And oh yeah, there's my new favorite: guys like this will just blow up the school instead. It is now extremely difficult to acquire the necessary chemicals to pull off such a task precisely because reasonable and very effective laws were passed after the OKC bombing. Just ask the idiot who tried it in Times Square earlier this year.
We don't need guns to be safe. They are in fact the reason we dont feel safe in the first place.
Wow you missed the point entirely. Or perhaps that was an attempt at humor. Either way, in a world where grade school teachers are armed in the classroom do you expect gang rapists to avoid guns because they're dangerous or something?
Apparently libertarian tendencies dont go beyond Obamacare and your glock. These people are not "lunatics" the way they are often betrayed in the movies (think Dirty Harry). They are otherwise "normal" seeming people who tend to demonstrate their violent tendencies for only a short time before acting on them.
It is only after a thorough investigation of the person that the tendencies become obvious. So are you prepared to arrest and commit people for posting disturbing facebook entries? On the say of their neighbor? Based on something their high school guidance councilor thinks?
Moreover, you seem to suggest that we allow the same govt you mistrust with basic weapon regulations to regulate the standard of "crazy" in a way that involves monitoring and preemptively arresting people based on "crazy panels" that determine who will shoot a bunch of grade-schoolers and who will just go postal on some deer.
As for the pipe-bomb thing, yes it would be preferable because for most people like this, it is the act of shooting their victims that they seek. Lighting a pipe bomb and running would not allow them to look their victim in the eye. Thats why you never hear about that version of events. Its always the image of a guy in black leather holding multiple weapons in some Call of Duty pose that turns up. They dont want to hear a boom and hope they did the deed. They want to be face to face. And if they blow themselves up right away, they cant roam the halls shooting people they've never even met and dont "care" about.
Guns elevate the power of the powerless. A 90lb 5ft tall college girl isn't going to be able to fight off a gangrape with her strength alone, with a gun she can. You may never be able to match the power of an oppressive government, but you can become more equal by being armed.
Right, so the guys doing the raping are gonna come at her with their dicks while she's got a gun? Unlikely. Moreover, most violent crimes occur in such a way that the attacker "gets the drop on" the victim. This suggests that reaching for a gun when someone else is already pointing one at you would do much more harm than good.
Most of these arguments are based on the hollywood-fed groupthink that results in revenge fantasies like yours. "Attractive, gun-wielding woman shoots sleazy toothpick chewing thugs while shouting: You want some too? Come and get it!"
It resulted in strict regulation of fertilizer and the other materials involved, which resulted in 0 incidents like it since. Moreover, that was 20 years ago. How many have died from gun violence since - many many thousands.
I can go into a store today and buy everything needed to blow a building to bits. Remember Oklahoma City? If you don't want a big boom, you can always go the bleach and ammonia route. If you want to kill or maim people in mass quantities, you don't need a gun. You can use a car. Or a plane. I suppose banning planes is next?
Everything you refer to have primary uses that in no way involve violence. Guns have a single purpose. Death. And if you say we still need to kill rats with antlers for fun on the weekends, fine. Get a bow and arrow.
if all guns were gone tomorrow, loonies would still kill people. guns are not the problem.
You're an obtuse, insensitive, jackass. Most of those kids would still be alive if he was using a knife or hammer or whatever "tool" you're talking about.
I would rather see resources put into identifying and helping the lunatics. That is the elephant in the room.
Riiight...so instead of limiting access to weapons that are made solely to kill other human beings (NO ONE GOES HUNTING WITH A HANDGUN) in the name of individual liberty, you propose "identifying" and isolating individuals whom we decide are crazy because of some facebook posts or something they said to their mother.
Another insane rationalization. Oh wait, maybe YOU'RE crazy. I think you need to be isolated...
Or if all of the teachers had concealed carry he would have been taken out immediately.
Well, not immediately, but sooner. The question is, if all, or more realistically, some number of people in schools had ready access to a firearm, would there be more deaths or fewer?
Why is it so hard to see why this line of thinking is utterly absurd?
What you're arguing is that to protect some theoretical right to "fight oppression" with some semi-automatic AK-47 replicas, every grade-school teacher should be armed. What about waiters? How about the nice lady at the Macy's cosmetics counter? What about movie-theater ushers?
And even if you could convince a sane person that this was somehow a good idea in principle, you'd still have to explain how that would have changed anything in this case. This guy walked into a grade-school classroom where his own mother was the teacher and started shooting without warning. He killed her and then within seconds turned on the kids in the class. For your reasoning to make any practical sense at all, she would have had to not only be armed, but actually be carrying the weapon while teaching the class then pull it and fire with gunslinger-like speed and accuracy. (Or maybe you think the kids should have been armed as well).
Just because you live in a fantasy land where Obama is a communist who wants to take your dirt-farm doesn't mean you'll ever actually get a chance to pull a gun on a mugger (at which point you are statistically almost certain to die by your own weapon anyway).
No one wants to stop you from killing rats with antlers, they just want to make the world a little safer.
As I've heard somebody say (my experience confirms it too): "People on drugs think they are creative and productive. Everyone else thinks they are on drugs." The same can be said about alcohol.
It depends on how you define "productive". If you mean churning out line after line of procedural algorithms, you are unlikely to accomplish much while under the influence. But if you're talking about creative problem solving that involves "thinking outside the box", there's a lot to be said for "altered states".
More often than not, breakthroughs in understanding tend to come from a reevaluating of previous assumptions. So for example, if you've been banging away at a problem for a week and cant seem to see a way out, cannabis can provide a bit of "distance" from the problem while not completely removing you from that space.
That said, I would never recommend - and in fact would strongly discourage - people from using during the bulk of their work. It is far too disruptive to normal cognitive function to allow for proper concentration and it is especially bad for learning. You just dont retain anything properly. It's a tool in the toolbox like any other.
We choose between the party that taxes us to subsidize farmers and hollywood, or the party that taxes us to subsidize banks and oil companies. You may claim there is a difference, but I don't see enough of one for it to matter.
The difference is in the history and direction of the subsidies you include in your equation. Their current vectors.
I understand that because food and fuel are arguably in the same range in terms of necessity and there are giant corporations on both sides, it is easy to make them appear equivalent.
The banks are a special case here wherein they are accused of and in many cases proven to have shot themselves directly in the foot. And when they can't perform their function because their too busy bleeding to death. Therefore the lack of any alternative system of currency exchange - aside from pigs and bales of wheat - the feds had no choice but to stop the bleeding and buy them all Segways so they could go about their business.
They got away with murder and the motto has been "never again" ever since. I agree.
The oil companies are a different story. Because of a century of not only subsidies but the entire US military to back them up, they have established themselves as the most profitable firms on the planet. Bar none (except Apple, which is really astounding BTW).
On the other side of your equation you have farm subsidies and Hollywood. Now I'm not sure what you mean about Hollywood, but I'm fairly sure whatever it is its 0.01% of the bank bailout and aircraft carriers dont protect the honey-wagons on a location shoot.
I also agree that farm subsidies are out of control. But precisely because farming is big business, you can't suddenly choke off millions of dollars of what is effectively "income" and not expect them to slash costs. Which would inevitably reduce the quality and quantity of what they produce. You know, bread and stuff.
Now when someone in power has the cajones to go after these subsidies in a rational way, I will support them even if they are attacked relentlessly by Karl Rove's PAC. But until then we have bigger fish to fry.
Look, as a share of what we spend, there is no comparison. And as outrageous injustices go, hedging with swaps has already written its own chapter in the history books and oil itself may well be humanity's undoing.
Basically, I dont question the numerators in your equation. It's a basic 1-1. But the denominators that are waaaaay off.
But just about every election is a choice between two flawed individuals.
No sir. There are at least four other individuals you can choose from, most of which have fewer flaws than the two you refer to. Make a real choice on Tuesday. Tell the oligarchy you've had enough.
First of all, you can replace two with six and my statement still stands. I don't think anyone believes the people to which you refer are "flawless".
My point was simply that for a candidate to reasonably claim the support of a plurality of 300+ million people (something none of the other candidates can even come close to claiming - not necessarily for lack of merit), they must make compromises. The reasons for this are obvious:
1. Money
2. Electability (again nothing to do with merit, just the realities of how the general public chooses a leader - which is very different from choosing policy).
I agree we need a system that encourages more and better choices, but I stand by my statement. Which was, by the way, not central to the larger point about Obama's (possible) second term.
When Obama and Congressional leaders (from both parties) sat around and discussed "alternatives" to the healthcare overhaul which had already passed with a normal majority but was being held up by filibuster in the senate?
When the Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell saying that their top priority - in the face of crippling financial collapse caused in no small measure because of his own parties policies - was to "make him a one term president"? Which was then acted on...
When the House held up passing a quite standard extension to the debt limit in the hope of making Obama look weak and in favor of "increasing the debt" in the name of - as Paul Krugman puts it - summoning the confidence fairy? Which of course resulted in the rest of actually starting to question the ability of the US political system to deal with the problem.
When Tea Party affiliated candidates started turning the Republicans against themselves in the name of some idealized and quite fictional "good ol days" when the government didn't do anything more than ensure that the harbors were safe and contracts were enforced? The effect of which has been to scare all Republicans from being at all reasonable with regard to taxes?
When every single Republican candidate said they would not accept even a 10-1 ratio of tax cuts to new revenue?
I can go on and on.
Yes, Obama and his team have not done a good enough job explaining these things, which is why Bill Clinton's otherwise obvious logic had such an impact at the Democratic convention.
Yes, there has been very little from Obama on what exactly he plans to do differently in the next four years - I think mainly because whomever wins will have to make difficult decisions and neither side is willing to "go first" and illustrate just how they would inflict the inevitable pain.
Yes, the core of both parties are hopelessly corrupted by the now billions of dollars spent on elections.
But just about every election is a choice between two flawed individuals. In this case I am going to choose the individual who seems most likely to do what he says and has some grounding the same kind of life I do. Obama has not lied per se. I believe he just greatly underestimated what he would face when he took office. In fact, NO ONE knew what he would face when he was nominated as the Democratic candidate, and very few really understood what he would face even as he was sworn in.
The first term is always the learning period. I believe Obama has learned his lesson (in no small part because he has stopped talking uniting and started talking about getting things done). I believe he will make better decisions in the next four years, and I simply do not trust Romney to do the same.
I think we need to either move towards a socialistic society
Yes, we should adopt Socialism because that's much better at adapting to a fast changing technology marketplace. Instead of small companies producing disruptive tech, you have giant institutional monopolies (see cable/phone/car companies, etc) doing whatever they must to maintain "stability" and such.
the administration is still talking about the stupid irrelevant film instead of the fact that the Libya attack was obviously a planned and successful Al Qaeda operation to assassinate a US ambassador
What? How about this? I for one would like to avoid making foreign policy based on assumptions and hearsay. Or perhaps you're a Mittens man and would rather jump to wild conclusions before any real information is available?
And before you start wailing about how some of those early baseless assumptions turned out to be partly true, I would remind you that a broken clock is right twice a day...
Also, while the attack was clearly a blow to our local Libyan intelligence operation - in addition to the obvious human tragedy - the impact of the movie and its subsequent protests are more troubling because they demonstrate how there is a downside to greater freedom of expression in the region. There is clearly an attempt by extremists (religious and governmental) to hijack that freedom to let everyone know that they are still a potent force. The trick is to respect the protests while not allowing them to be completely one-sided. The counter-protests in Libya are a good example of this.
I wonder if people in the middle east realize how steadily their image as pre-enlightenment zealots with no interest in modernization is solidifying in the West. There was once a valid critique that said the West just didn't understand the Mid-East and that it was judging it in a relativistic way. But now that the West has been paying attention for a while, those early truisms seem downright sage-like.
"Experts" continue to offer somber explanations for such violent outbursts, saying that their youth is feeling a profound humiliation and that they are simply taking it out on the Western boogieman their parents and grandparents were taught to fear. This may be true on some level. But at what point do they take the responsibility for their own development. How long before they realize that whether or not you believe someone else is holding you back, you have to move forward on your own.
The "Arab Spring" seemed to offer a tantalizing bit of hope for a change from within, but if the religious right in the US is any indication, there is no reasoning with a zealot. And when the government of such a large and strategically important nation like Pakistan calls for worldwide censorship to avoid further offending an already humiliated culture, where is the path to change?
This is not news. This is Wikileaks publishing uncorroborated "evidence" that matches their expectations about "Big Brother".
Some things to remember:
1. The system is in no way secret and there are numerous publicly available sources of information about municipal uptake: public hearings, contracts, etc.
2. Most (if not all) of these emails were marketing materials or communiques regarding trial runs.
3. There is no evidence that TrapWire is currently in use as described in the Wikileaks release. See the NYTimes, Slate articles (among many others) that investigate the system's actual purpose and use.
Wikileaks has been more or less forgotten by the general public, so it's not surprising that they would take every opportunity to spout sensationalized conspiracy theories to regain the spotlight. After all, what would they be today without Mr. Manning's foolish self-sacrifice? A wanna be World News Daily.
Perhaps it is not feasible (or even desirable) for the/. editorial staff to vet everything that gets posted, but I for one am not interested in hearing every conspiracy theory floating on the web - regardless of the sympathy some may have for the source.
Not GM grass. Naturally bred hybrid. The headline is 100% wrong.
Perhaps you should read the actual article before posting. And, BTW, the first non-PDF result of your posted google search says specifically that it's a hybrid not a GM strain.
If you're actually "not a anti-GM nut" you should act like one.
Slashdot Mirror
Because some "people" deserve to be killed. Gun control advocates for instance, the politicians who cater to them by legislating and enacting gun control and gun bans, and the "law enforcement" agents at the federal, state and local levels who enforce such "laws" (and who wear body armor as a matter of routine during their violent no-knock raids).
Wow. You realize that you just advocated the assassination of public officials, right? (Not to mention myself - a gun control advocate). If I thought you were serious I would report you to the same authorities you appear to hate so vehemently, but as I actually believe you are a harmless internet troll fapping away while people respond to your hate rants with outrage, I will pass.
BTW, have fun with the FBI/Secret Service investigation you are so desperate to instigate. I know they'll have fun with you...
No. Its to filter out people who should not have guns in the first place.
And since it cannot possibly help in that regard - fail.
Why exactly? Thats the reason so many people are so upset about the failure to do anything. You have no reasons. I offered a number of reasons why I think more effective background checks are a good idea but you dont address any of them. You simply parrot the NRA line that it just "wont work". No reasons, just that background checks will somehow inconvenience people - which is bullshit for two reasons:
Then of course you pull out the old chestnut: some hypothetical future (democratically elected) official will suddenly become a fascist dictator hell bent on taking everyone's guns away for some reason. (Of course you could be one of the crazies that think Obama is the antichrist or something, in which case you should probably just stop reading and go polish your gun). There are again, two primary problems with this objection:
Please understand, I am in no way suggesting that the government should confiscate anyone's shotgun or even their licensed handgun. What I and most of the rest of the country is saying is, "let's be smart about who we let have a gun". Very simple. What exactly - and I mean lay it out for me in more detail than "nah, wont work" - is wrong with that?
Please, for the sake of everyone else who agrees with you and has similarly failed to do so, give us something that doesn't include "because freedom".
[Sorry for the dupe post, but I didnt want to post anonymously]
It's for the government to track who has legal guns among people that will not commit crimes.
No. Its to filter out people who should not have guns in the first place. The conspiracy theory on this is that there will be some maniacal evil genius control freak somewhere (at the UN?) ready to command a secret army massing behind the moon to go door to door in Montana taking away everyone's shotguns. Utter gibberish. And of course there's the inevitable Nazi references, which I wont even waste the pixels addressing.
Well then it's stupid on the face of it because "ON AVERAGE" all criminals simply buy or steal guns illegally anyway, since they don't want something that could be traced back to them. They are criminals after all.
Exactly! And where do these guns come from exactly? They are not coming from some random gun theft in some random neighborhood. They are coming from organized groups of criminals who are operating in the dark corners of the gun show loopholes buying weapons and ammo in volume to resell on the black market. Again, background checks will not stop all gun violence. They will simply thwart the largest illicit operations from doing what they have done for decades: buy lots of guns in places where no one cares who they are or who they are associated with and re-sell them illegally in places where it's hard to get a gun. This is how ALL black markets work.
In the end all you are doing is tracking the people who will ON AVERAGE never commit a crime, and make it harder for them to buy guns than the criminals that may kill them.
Why do I need to register my car? On average, most people do not engage in vehicular manslaughter. But when it does occur law enforcement has a way to track the car to a person. Now that person may not have been driving because the car was stolen, but at least they can ask that person what happened to the car. Did their brother-in-law borrow it? When/where was it reported stolen? Etc. Similarly, why do I need a passport to get across a border. On average most people are not trying to escape justice and remain anonymous. But by requiring everyone to have one, we are much more effective in maintaining security at the borders and track criminals as they travel. (You sound like a border-security type, so that should sound familiar).
I can't believe that someone on Slashdot is taking the side of the jackboots
There's Godwin's law [wikipedia.org] at work. You didn't actually call the US government Nazis, but you do realize where the term "jackboot" comes from...right?
If you are at all about protecting rights you are against further gun regulations;
Why? Because you have the only "correct" opinion? Sounds like a fascism to me. I am using well established non-partisan facts to make a case for sane gun regulations designed to allow law abiding people to continue buying guns for both recreational and self-defense purposes while filtering as many illicit purchases as possible.
You, on the other hand, are relying on misinformation disseminated by the lobbying organization for the largest weapons manufacturers in the world to make outrageous speculative claims about some mythological totalitarian state that exists only in the minds of people who go to great lengths to justify wearing a pistol into McDonalds.
Registration when buying kitchen supplies? If gun regulation passes I will be in full support of it, because why go halfway?
Cant believe I have to address this, but I will. Kitchen supplies have a non-lethal, non-criminal, delicious purpose. You can use a rock to kill someone. That is what's known in the debating business as a "strawman". Look it up. I dont have the patience to put two wikipedia links into one post. No one - NO ONE - is suggesting that we regulate anything that can be
You miss the point of background checks. It is not to stop individual crimes. It is to make it harder - ON AVERAGE - for people with a history of violent and/or criminal behavior to acquire firearms. Think abusive spouses who don't like their ex's being with someone new. Or a stalker who wants to take their obsession to the next level. Or a thug with a record who wants to pick up the latest in thug technology. WIthout a federal background check, states that allow people to carry concealed weapons into bars and schools in the name of "freedom" would do nothing to stop such individuals from acquiring firearms.
The 20 children killed in the Newtown massacre (say that out loud if you are unsure of why people want action) are a drop in the bucket when it comes to gun violence. THOUSANDS have been killed by guns since then, and many of those crimes would almost certainly not have occurred if the US had two things: 1) effective and universal gun regulations, 2) a less fanatical obsession with violence as a solution to people's problems (think "War on ___" or how every "action" movie poster includes someone holding a weapon). I am not one to shy away from criticizing the entertainment industry for their pandering, and hope the increasing number of large-scale public tragedies involving guns will begin to turn the tide against this long-standing trend.
But i digress.
The ridiculous meme that says something like: "Chicago has strict gun laws and they have lots of gun violence" completely ignores the fact that many if not all of the guns used in Chicago come from outside the city's jurisdiction. The same goes for NY, Washington DC, Miami, etc. These cities know what the problem is, but they cant do anything about it because neighboring states ignore it in the name of "freedom". Recent studies have shown that a large percentage of the guns used in NY-Metro area crimes originate as legit purchases in states like Virginia where the gun lobby has fear-mongered the local legislature away from even the most basic regulations.
Consider what would happen if you couldn't go to a "gun show" in someone's backyard and pick up a bunch of handguns to sell on the black market in Chicago. Where would the average street thug get their weapons? Russian arms dealers? 3D printing? Granted there are plenty of weapons already out there, but is "it's hard so what's the point" really an excuse?
And background checks do not address the problem of what you can buy once you pass. Why would anyone need a semi-automatic rifle with armor piercing rounds and a 30-round magazine?!? For that entire heard of delicious armor-plated deer you ran out of standard rounds trying to slaughter? To shoot at UN tanks when they invade Idaho?
Please explain...
Yes, he had time to shoot those kids multiple times. That's a big fat, "Whatever". They were likely dead after the first well aimed shot.
To begin with, your callus attitude towards what happened in that classroom is astounding. It is indicative of why this "debate" is so futile. You appear to feel nothing for those kids and what they went through - whether they were killed after the "first well aimed shot" or not.
That said, let me try to get past your perhaps unwitting ugliness and address the points you tried to make.
First you dismiss any effective difference between, for example, a bolt-action hunting rifle and a semi-automatic assault weapon. Fine, so why would anyone need a Bushmaster? If you can shoot a deer or an intruder with a bolt action or shotgun and get the job done just as effectively, why do we need semi-automatic weapons at all? Convenience? Not good enough. Cool-factor? Not even close. So I would suggest that you explain to the world why exactly we need such weapons in the hands of civilians in the first place.
Second, you claim that because there are 200 million weapons out there already, "The crazy people will get them and there is nothing you and I or even Congress can do about it. Period." Really? So if no new semi-automatic weapons were manufactured or imported for civilian use, would there still be 200 million weapons out there in 10 years? 20 years? Would you tell a newborn that there's nothing you or anyone else can do about guns because it wouldn't help anyone right now? Sounds like a rather short-sighted view of the world. Perhaps you would reconsider if you added confiscation regulations as well - but no, of course not. That would be "treasonous" and cause for another "revolution". And at the very least, it would not get past the House with its current makeup. Another reason to vote Democratic in 2014.
The rest of your reasoning is somewhat less coherent, but I will address a little of it.
If someone can afford to spend their money on drugs, they can certainly afford to buy a gun on the black market.
This is a bit of a digression, but I believe you misunderstand why people buy guns on the black market. No one who can "afford to buy drugs" would buy a gun to get more because they already have the money to buy drugs. Based on how you talk about drugs I do believe you when you say that you've never smoked pot in your life. Moreover, the fact that you place the words pot and guns in the same sentence implies that you have a very shallow understanding of what makes someone commit a gun crime. Pot is almost never the source of individual crimes on it's own. Mainly for the reason you yourself suggest - it's too easy to get (Cartel violence is of course another story, but the legalization and regulation of marijuana is a completely different discussion that is also being had across the nation). Heroin, meth, cocaine, etc is where the gun violence is at, and most of those crimes are committed using guns that were purchased legally and then fell into the black market. But back to your case.
I've never owned a gun in my life, and I am certain I could, with a reasonable amount of money, get my hands on 2-3 handguns, unregistered and ready for some school rampage.
And why is that exactly? Because criminals are so good at working the system? No. You can buy an unregistered firearm precisely because so many unregistered weapons are being sold legally. What do you think they're doing at all those school gymnasium "gun shows"? No background checks. No registration. And if you're referring to the weak serial number system currently in place, how about some microprinting on them guns? No of course not, because that would make George Washington cry.
the culture needs to change, and then the people will hand in their guns on their own unless they actually need them
There was a story a few years
not a single one of the new regulations being proposed would have stopped any of these mass shootings
So what you're saying is that Lanza would have done the same amount of damage as fast as he did without the use of a semi-automatic assault rifle? You're suggesting that the sale of thousands of rounds of ammunition to anonymous buyers without any oversight would not have made it more difficult to acquire the arsenals used in many of these shootings? Are you saying that there is no such thing as an effective gun regulation?
The US has almost double the rate of any other industrialized nation when it comes to gun related crime. The reasons for that are fairly simple: a) it's too easy to buy a gun, b) the cultural insanity that calls itself the "gun culture" has put weaponized assault on the forefront of everyone's mind.
Moreover, the "gunshow loophole" has created a huge hole in whatever gun regulations there are already in place, which makes it seem easy to argue that "gun laws are ineffective". The common way to put this is: "gun crime is the most serious where the gun laws are the strictest, so that means gun laws dont work". Bullshit. Gun laws do work, its the fact that guns are purchased in unregulated states and brought to where the money is: NYC, Chicago, LA, etc. (Fact: most guns used in NYC crimes are purchased legally in places like Virginia and resold on the black market - look it up).
Therefore it stands to reason that if gun laws both strict and uniform across all the states (i.e., federal law), it would be much more difficult for criminals to attain weapons. Now of course this will not be effective overnight. There are already millions and millions of guns out in the wild, but going forward we need to start working on a sane gun policy and apply it everywhere - not just where people are actually dying from gun violence.
People outside major cities are perfectly happy to reap the rewards they bring to our society, but when it comes to gun violence, the non-city dwellers say "Screw you, we're keeping our guns. You're on your own".
While it is true that the share price is partly based on the assumption that the price will continue to go up - i.e., getting in now is the best way to make money on Apple's future success. - there is good reason for optimism. The Tulip example is of course a metaphor, but Apple is not a commodity or even a set of products. Apple is a way of designing, making and marketing products. The reason Samsung is able to sell smart phones at the rate they are is because Apple made everyone "realize" that smart phones are cool. And that's just design and marketing. They also make stuff. Really well. BTW, I dont (think) I even own any Apple stock.
Let me start by saying that I believe you are as upset about what happened as anyone else. I also believe that you are trying to be reasonable about this. However...
More guns == more violence. Plain and simple. If you arm more people, more people will be involved in gun violence. This is not a conclusion, but rather a fundamental premise for any argument that involves "if only someone had been armed, they could have stopped this". In other words, the only way for me to be safe from guns is to carry a gun myself. Hence the reductio ad absurdum critique.
If you asked people to decide between no one having a gun and everyone having one, I think most non-gun owners would instantly say: no guns. Gun owners on the other hand would provide a wide array of excuses for their fetish. (His mother was an avowed "gun enthusiast", by the way)
Some will point to boogie men like FEMA or the UN. Others would offer what appears on the face of it to be a reasonable answer, saying that guns were a fact of life for pre-modern societies who lacked sophisticated law enforcement or local fried chicken joints, and therefore it would somehow be unfair if they cant go out and shoot some deer on the weekends because its "part of our history".
All of these reasons are ridiculous. An AR-15 you buy at Walmart is not going to stop a fantasy FEMA tank and no one uses a Glock 9mm to hunt. So ultimately they all fall back on "its in the constitution", as if it was something Jesus said. And oh yeah, there's my new favorite: guys like this will just blow up the school instead. It is now extremely difficult to acquire the necessary chemicals to pull off such a task precisely because reasonable and very effective laws were passed after the OKC bombing. Just ask the idiot who tried it in Times Square earlier this year.
We don't need guns to be safe. They are in fact the reason we dont feel safe in the first place.
Wow you missed the point entirely. Or perhaps that was an attempt at humor. Either way, in a world where grade school teachers are armed in the classroom do you expect gang rapists to avoid guns because they're dangerous or something?
It is only after a thorough investigation of the person that the tendencies become obvious. So are you prepared to arrest and commit people for posting disturbing facebook entries? On the say of their neighbor? Based on something their high school guidance councilor thinks?
Moreover, you seem to suggest that we allow the same govt you mistrust with basic weapon regulations to regulate the standard of "crazy" in a way that involves monitoring and preemptively arresting people based on "crazy panels" that determine who will shoot a bunch of grade-schoolers and who will just go postal on some deer.
As for the pipe-bomb thing, yes it would be preferable because for most people like this, it is the act of shooting their victims that they seek. Lighting a pipe bomb and running would not allow them to look their victim in the eye. Thats why you never hear about that version of events. Its always the image of a guy in black leather holding multiple weapons in some Call of Duty pose that turns up. They dont want to hear a boom and hope they did the deed. They want to be face to face. And if they blow themselves up right away, they cant roam the halls shooting people they've never even met and dont "care" about.
Guns elevate the power of the powerless. A 90lb 5ft tall college girl isn't going to be able to fight off a gangrape with her strength alone, with a gun she can. You may never be able to match the power of an oppressive government, but you can become more equal by being armed.
Right, so the guys doing the raping are gonna come at her with their dicks while she's got a gun? Unlikely. Moreover, most violent crimes occur in such a way that the attacker "gets the drop on" the victim. This suggests that reaching for a gun when someone else is already pointing one at you would do much more harm than good.
Most of these arguments are based on the hollywood-fed groupthink that results in revenge fantasies like yours. "Attractive, gun-wielding woman shoots sleazy toothpick chewing thugs while shouting: You want some too? Come and get it!"
It resulted in strict regulation of fertilizer and the other materials involved, which resulted in 0 incidents like it since. Moreover, that was 20 years ago. How many have died from gun violence since - many many thousands.
So actually, he was not wrong. You are.
I can go into a store today and buy everything needed to blow a building to bits. Remember Oklahoma City? If you don't want a big boom, you can always go the bleach and ammonia route. If you want to kill or maim people in mass quantities, you don't need a gun. You can use a car. Or a plane. I suppose banning planes is next?
Everything you refer to have primary uses that in no way involve violence. Guns have a single purpose. Death. And if you say we still need to kill rats with antlers for fun on the weekends, fine. Get a bow and arrow.
if all guns were gone tomorrow, loonies would still kill people. guns are not the problem.
You're an obtuse, insensitive, jackass. Most of those kids would still be alive if he was using a knife or hammer or whatever "tool" you're talking about.
I would rather see resources put into identifying and helping the lunatics. That is the elephant in the room.
Riiight...so instead of limiting access to weapons that are made solely to kill other human beings (NO ONE GOES HUNTING WITH A HANDGUN) in the name of individual liberty, you propose "identifying" and isolating individuals whom we decide are crazy because of some facebook posts or something they said to their mother.
Another insane rationalization. Oh wait, maybe YOU'RE crazy. I think you need to be isolated...
Well, not immediately, but sooner. The question is, if all, or more realistically, some number of people in schools had ready access to a firearm, would there be more deaths or fewer?
Why is it so hard to see why this line of thinking is utterly absurd?
What you're arguing is that to protect some theoretical right to "fight oppression" with some semi-automatic AK-47 replicas, every grade-school teacher should be armed. What about waiters? How about the nice lady at the Macy's cosmetics counter? What about movie-theater ushers?
And even if you could convince a sane person that this was somehow a good idea in principle, you'd still have to explain how that would have changed anything in this case. This guy walked into a grade-school classroom where his own mother was the teacher and started shooting without warning. He killed her and then within seconds turned on the kids in the class. For your reasoning to make any practical sense at all, she would have had to not only be armed, but actually be carrying the weapon while teaching the class then pull it and fire with gunslinger-like speed and accuracy. (Or maybe you think the kids should have been armed as well).
Just because you live in a fantasy land where Obama is a communist who wants to take your dirt-farm doesn't mean you'll ever actually get a chance to pull a gun on a mugger (at which point you are statistically almost certain to die by your own weapon anyway).
No one wants to stop you from killing rats with antlers, they just want to make the world a little safer.
As I've heard somebody say (my experience confirms it too): "People on drugs think they are creative and productive. Everyone else thinks they are on drugs." The same can be said about alcohol.
It depends on how you define "productive". If you mean churning out line after line of procedural algorithms, you are unlikely to accomplish much while under the influence. But if you're talking about creative problem solving that involves "thinking outside the box", there's a lot to be said for "altered states".
More often than not, breakthroughs in understanding tend to come from a reevaluating of previous assumptions. So for example, if you've been banging away at a problem for a week and cant seem to see a way out, cannabis can provide a bit of "distance" from the problem while not completely removing you from that space.
That said, I would never recommend - and in fact would strongly discourage - people from using during the bulk of their work. It is far too disruptive to normal cognitive function to allow for proper concentration and it is especially bad for learning. You just dont retain anything properly. It's a tool in the toolbox like any other.
We choose between the party that taxes us to subsidize farmers and hollywood, or the party that taxes us to subsidize banks and oil companies. You may claim there is a difference, but I don't see enough of one for it to matter.
The difference is in the history and direction of the subsidies you include in your equation. Their current vectors.
I understand that because food and fuel are arguably in the same range in terms of necessity and there are giant corporations on both sides, it is easy to make them appear equivalent.
The banks are a special case here wherein they are accused of and in many cases proven to have shot themselves directly in the foot. And when they can't perform their function because their too busy bleeding to death. Therefore the lack of any alternative system of currency exchange - aside from pigs and bales of wheat - the feds had no choice but to stop the bleeding and buy them all Segways so they could go about their business.
They got away with murder and the motto has been "never again" ever since. I agree.
The oil companies are a different story. Because of a century of not only subsidies but the entire US military to back them up, they have established themselves as the most profitable firms on the planet. Bar none (except Apple, which is really astounding BTW).
On the other side of your equation you have farm subsidies and Hollywood. Now I'm not sure what you mean about Hollywood, but I'm fairly sure whatever it is its 0.01% of the bank bailout and aircraft carriers dont protect the honey-wagons on a location shoot.
I also agree that farm subsidies are out of control. But precisely because farming is big business, you can't suddenly choke off millions of dollars of what is effectively "income" and not expect them to slash costs. Which would inevitably reduce the quality and quantity of what they produce. You know, bread and stuff.
Now when someone in power has the cajones to go after these subsidies in a rational way, I will support them even if they are attacked relentlessly by Karl Rove's PAC. But until then we have bigger fish to fry.
Look, as a share of what we spend, there is no comparison. And as outrageous injustices go, hedging with swaps has already written its own chapter in the history books and oil itself may well be humanity's undoing.
Basically, I dont question the numerators in your equation. It's a basic 1-1. But the denominators that are waaaaay off.
But just about every election is a choice between two flawed individuals.
No sir. There are at least four other individuals you can choose from, most of which have fewer flaws than the two you refer to. Make a real choice on Tuesday. Tell the oligarchy you've had enough.
First of all, you can replace two with six and my statement still stands. I don't think anyone believes the people to which you refer are "flawless".
My point was simply that for a candidate to reasonably claim the support of a plurality of 300+ million people (something none of the other candidates can even come close to claiming - not necessarily for lack of merit), they must make compromises. The reasons for this are obvious:
I agree we need a system that encourages more and better choices, but I stand by my statement. Which was, by the way, not central to the larger point about Obama's (possible) second term.
Does everyone really have that short a memory?
How about...
I can go on and on.
Yes, Obama and his team have not done a good enough job explaining these things, which is why Bill Clinton's otherwise obvious logic had such an impact at the Democratic convention.
Yes, there has been very little from Obama on what exactly he plans to do differently in the next four years - I think mainly because whomever wins will have to make difficult decisions and neither side is willing to "go first" and illustrate just how they would inflict the inevitable pain.
Yes, the core of both parties are hopelessly corrupted by the now billions of dollars spent on elections.
But just about every election is a choice between two flawed individuals. In this case I am going to choose the individual who seems most likely to do what he says and has some grounding the same kind of life I do. Obama has not lied per se. I believe he just greatly underestimated what he would face when he took office. In fact, NO ONE knew what he would face when he was nominated as the Democratic candidate, and very few really understood what he would face even as he was sworn in.
The first term is always the learning period. I believe Obama has learned his lesson (in no small part because he has stopped talking uniting and started talking about getting things done). I believe he will make better decisions in the next four years, and I simply do not trust Romney to do the same.
I think we need to either move towards a socialistic society
Yes, we should adopt Socialism because that's much better at adapting to a fast changing technology marketplace. Instead of small companies producing disruptive tech, you have giant institutional monopolies (see cable/phone/car companies, etc) doing whatever they must to maintain "stability" and such.
Much better.
the administration is still talking about the stupid irrelevant film instead of the fact that the Libya attack was obviously a planned and successful Al Qaeda operation to assassinate a US ambassador
What? How about this? I for one would like to avoid making foreign policy based on assumptions and hearsay. Or perhaps you're a Mittens man and would rather jump to wild conclusions before any real information is available?
And before you start wailing about how some of those early baseless assumptions turned out to be partly true, I would remind you that a broken clock is right twice a day...
Also, while the attack was clearly a blow to our local Libyan intelligence operation - in addition to the obvious human tragedy - the impact of the movie and its subsequent protests are more troubling because they demonstrate how there is a downside to greater freedom of expression in the region. There is clearly an attempt by extremists (religious and governmental) to hijack that freedom to let everyone know that they are still a potent force. The trick is to respect the protests while not allowing them to be completely one-sided. The counter-protests in Libya are a good example of this.
I wonder if people in the middle east realize how steadily their image as pre-enlightenment zealots with no interest in modernization is solidifying in the West. There was once a valid critique that said the West just didn't understand the Mid-East and that it was judging it in a relativistic way. But now that the West has been paying attention for a while, those early truisms seem downright sage-like.
"Experts" continue to offer somber explanations for such violent outbursts, saying that their youth is feeling a profound humiliation and that they are simply taking it out on the Western boogieman their parents and grandparents were taught to fear. This may be true on some level. But at what point do they take the responsibility for their own development. How long before they realize that whether or not you believe someone else is holding you back, you have to move forward on your own.
The "Arab Spring" seemed to offer a tantalizing bit of hope for a change from within, but if the religious right in the US is any indication, there is no reasoning with a zealot. And when the government of such a large and strategically important nation like Pakistan calls for worldwide censorship to avoid further offending an already humiliated culture, where is the path to change?
This is not news. This is Wikileaks publishing uncorroborated "evidence" that matches their expectations about "Big Brother".
Some things to remember:
Wikileaks has been more or less forgotten by the general public, so it's not surprising that they would take every opportunity to spout sensationalized conspiracy theories to regain the spotlight. After all, what would they be today without Mr. Manning's foolish self-sacrifice? A wanna be World News Daily.
Perhaps it is not feasible (or even desirable) for the /. editorial staff to vet everything that gets posted, but I for one am not interested in hearing every conspiracy theory floating on the web - regardless of the sympathy some may have for the source.
Not GM grass. Naturally bred hybrid. The headline is 100% wrong.
Perhaps you should read the actual article before posting. And, BTW, the first non-PDF result of your posted google search says specifically that it's a hybrid not a GM strain.
If you're actually "not a anti-GM nut" you should act like one.